Some years glide by. 2025 absolutely did not. It lurched, snapped, fizzed, spiralled, and yet spat out moments of such clarity, chaos and brilliance that they somehow made the whole thing feel worth it.

As always, we’ve argued, sulked, shifted things up and down spreadsheets at 1am, changed our minds, changed them back, and eventually landed on a Top 100 that captures the full, messy shape of the year. Some of these records arrived with full blockbuster fanfare; others crept in sideways and refused to leave. Some are debuts that signalled a door blowing open; some are by artists who’ve never felt more in command. What they all share is that special jolt that something real was happening, whether it was shouted from rooftops or whispered into headphones.

That’s the version of the year we’re counting down over December, not the tidy narrative the machine likes to pretend exists, but the one we actually lived through. The one full of odd left-turns, tiny triumphs, emotional haymakers, ridiculous bangers, huge statements, quiet killers and albums that lodged themselves so firmly under our skin we’re still shaking them loose over the festive nut roast.

Across the next two weeks, we’ll be revealing the list bit by glorious bit. Just the albums that made our hearts race, our brains fizz and our year make a tiny bit more sense. From the cult favourites to the big hitters, this is 2025 as we heard it: brilliant, unpredictable, occasionally unhinged, and absolutely worth celebrating.

100-81 | 80-61 | 60-41 | 40-21 | 20-11 | 10-6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1

Perhaps the most surprising album of 2025, Lily Allen’s fifth isn’t just a pop comeback: it’s an utterly scathing, excoriating examination of marital betrayal. At times it’s so brutally candid that you can’t quite believe what you’re hearing. It’s the sound of Lily Allen, forever one of our most brilliant pop conceptualists, using the medium because she has something important to say and nothing is going to get in the way of that. It doesn’t feel like an album targeted as Lily Allen’s pop comeback; it feels like an album that completely had to happen. She had to let this out. As a conceptual work, ‘West End Girl’ is astounding, and has firmly returned Lily Allen to pop’s top table. MY

Why was there all that discourse about 2025 having no song of the summer? ‘Illegal’ was right there. The literal reintroduction (her name is Pink and she’s really glad to meet you, FYI) to PinkPantheress did three things: it saw her shed the emo-lite skin she’d worn on mixtape ‘to hell with it’ and album ‘Heaven knows’, gave Pink her umpteenth TikTok hit, and kicked off the most addictive record of the year. ‘Fancy That’, clocking in at a mere 20 minutes, is a shot of adrenaline straight to the brain. Known for her penchant for sampling, here PinkPantheress has it down to a fine art. Who’d have thought the faceless teenager uploading song clips to TikTok would go on to become undoubtedly dance pop’s greatest magpie? AF

‘EUSEXUA’ feels like walking into a club during a storm and finding the music in perfect sync with the thunder rolling outside. FKA twigs has always thrived on shapeshifting, but this album captures her at her most fluid, bouncing between techno sting, pop gloss and intimate whispers without a hint of disjoint. Every vocal feels intentionally placed - breathy, clipped, stretched, glitched - as though she’s building a new language out of feeling alone. The album’s boldest moments aren’t its loudest; they’re the ones where she leaves space, daring the listener to lean in and decode her. It’s thrilling, mysterious and entirely her own. DH

‘Open Wide’ sounds like a band who’ve stopped worrying about proving themselves and finally started enjoying the view from the top. By album three, many acts either double down or break apart; Inhaler choose a different route, kicking down the walls of what they’ve already built and letting the air hit them. The result is their most extroverted, self-assured statement yet, all bright lights, big swings and a refusal to shrink. There’s an urgency humming underneath the entire record, but it’s not the restless scramble of a band on the rise. It’s the confidence of having survived it. It’s about stepping into scale; the moment a good band realises they’re allowed to be great. SA

‘Drive to Goldenhammer’ is the moment Divorce step into the version of themselves they’ve been circling for years. They’ve always written with a certain honesty: matter-of-fact, faintly absurd, tender, and here it’s the backbone of the album. Moving between scrappy indie, alt-country sway and stark, skeletal ballads, their instinct for tension, leaving space, letting lines hang, knowing when silence does more than a guitar line, becomes one of the album’s strongest tools. By the time it closes, ‘Drive to Goldenhammer’ has done precisely what debut albums often claim to but rarely achieve: it plants a flag; this is a band writing at full stretch and meaning every second of it. FN

There are few artists who have had a year quite like Olivia Dean has had in 2025. She was already a major talent with a bright future but her second album ‘The Art Of Loving’ has shot her into the stratosphere. It’s kind of a concept album about the most universal feeling, and it encapsulates all of Olivia’s best qualities as a writer. It’s warm and empathetic but never toxically positive. It explores love on a deeply human level. Joyous and ebullient on Number 1 single ‘Man I Need’ and blissed out and reflective on ‘A Couple Minutes’, one of the standout ballads. This is a record that meets the moment of pop superstardom with a carefree ease, and it feels beautifully right. MY

‘That’s Showbiz Baby!’ is Jade Thirlwall flat out demanding her way onto the solo A-list on sheer force of raw pop talent alone. The album treats stardom less as a dream than a backstage farce, where ambition, burnout and absurdity blur into one technicolour punchline. ‘Angel of My Dreams’ twists a Sandie Shaw classic into a dark flirtation. ‘It Girl’ skewers industry expectations. Across the record, Jade plays with camp, disco and electroclash without losing the melodic instinct that fuelled her Little Mix years. The humour is sharp, and even the flashiest songs reveal something bruised or brave at their centre. It’s a loud, bright, self-possessed debut that refuses to fade into tasteful simplicity. SA

This year, Audrey Hobert properly stepped out from behind the scenes as a songwriter for the likes of Gracie Abrams and took her own slice of the viral pie. Taking her sardonic wit and plastering it over tracks that excavate her inner workings in the most relatable ways, ‘Who’s the Clown?’ is a debut that bottles up all of its creators’ charm without losing that keen, human essence. Soundtracked by a knowing sense of twee naivety, her alt-pop’s electro-production makes the cutting, self-eviscerating subject matter stand out all the more. With an iconic late-night TV performance to boot, it’s all made for something very special indeed. SL

Where ‘Prelude to Ecstasy’ thrilled with sheer theatricality, ‘From the Pyre’ builds a stranger, richer, yet no less dramatic world around its own fire. The Last Dinner Party embrace melodrama with purpose, treating every arrangement like a stage set that can collapse or burst open depending on the mood. The band write with a kind of emotional maximalism that could easily slip into excess, but they ground it with sharp detail and unashamed vulnerability. ‘From the Pyre’ is doubling down on their own mythology and proving that lightning can strike twice - just not in the same place for long. SA

‘Louder, Please’ is the moment Rose Gray finally sounds as bold as the dancefloor world she’s been stalking for years. Her debut is a rush of house euphoria, UK rave DNA and glittery pop instinct, but what really lands is the sense of self she’s sharpened along the way. Songs like ‘Happiness’, ‘Sun Comes Up’ and ‘Prettier Than You’ hit with that clean, hands-in-the-air immediacy, but they’re carried by a voice that balances bite with warmth, and a writer who knows exactly how to fold melancholy into brightness without losing momentum. The deluxe edition only strengthens the album’s shape, bringing in collaborators like Shygirl, Jade and Actual Spice Girl Melanie C without diluting Gray’s own centre of gravity. It’s a debut built for clubs, cars and catharsis – big feelings, bigger confidence and no hesitation. DH